Biking Europehttp://xenotropic.net/europe
Joe and Suzanne's Honeymoon - Summer 2012Fri, 14 Feb 2014 22:31:58 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.22Highs, Lows, and Touring Tipshttp://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=246
http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=246#commentsFri, 07 Sep 2012 18:05:27 +0000http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=246We’re now safely back in Berkeley, and thought it would be worth a wrap-up post to review how far we went, the highs and lows, and things we learned.

The campsite at Camping de la Mer, Primel-Trégastel, Plousganou, France.

Road D17 in Provence, from Arles to St. Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, along the southern edge of the Alpilles and then (later) past Mont-Sainte-Victoire.

Biking around Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, starting at Fluelen.

Staying with friends and family in France and Germany.

Low Points of the Trip

The first week. It took a while to get into a rhythm of doing the daily things of bike touring — packing up and preparing to ride in the morning, figuring out how to make decisions together, and figuring out how to deal with rain. Suzanne was frustrated that Joe brought an old map of Ireland that was missing a major freeway, and Joe was frustrated that Suzanne hadn’t helped plan the route at all before leaving. It wasn’t all bad, but the first week was the most challenging.

The Val del Inferno in Tuscany. Michelin map led us astray onto hilly, rocky roads, with temperatures in the 90s.

We also came up with a few guidelines that helped us out. Here they are, perhaps as a note to ourselves if we do this again, and perhaps for any other bike touring couples out there:

Joe and Sanne’s Touring Tips
1. Always carry wet wipes. (thanks Ewan MacGregor)
2. Don’t let your spouse get hungry. Corollary: Always carry peanut M&Ms.
3. Test out all you gear, particularly your high pressure tire pump, before leaving (and don’t buy a tire pump from Lezyne).
4. Consider fatter tires for touring in Germany, where dirt roads and bumpy bike trails are the norm. , esp. the rear tire if that’s where the load is.
5. Never put both ATM cards in the same wallet (no wallet-related incidents for us, but seems like a good idea).
6. Camping gear in Europe can make it much cheaper, but cooking gear is unnecessary. We chose not to bring a stove and we very happy about that decision. Having a double sleeping bag was awesome.
7. Use French maps in France, German maps in Germany, etc. Michelin is great in France, not so much in Italy. No need for a map on Switzerland’s national bike routes; check out the Swisstrails information sheets (many of the “more infos” links have pdfs with town distance lists/topo profiles) to help guide your way.
8. Bring a miniature packtowl to wipe down the condensation in the tent if you have a single-wall tent.
9. Plan to take a day, or at least half a day, apart once every week to 10 days.
10. Trade off being “trip leader”. The TL is in charge of navigation (although consulting with the other person is a good idea), making reservations, asking for directions, etc. There are some decisions that are worth collaborating on (e.g., how far and where are we going today?), and some where it is better to have the TL make an executive decision (this hotel or that one? Left here or at the next road?).

]]>http://xenotropic.net/europe/?feed=rss2&p=2464Aside: Differences Between Biking in France and Germanyhttp://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=244
http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=244#commentsFri, 07 Sep 2012 18:01:31 +0000http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=244We found that biking in Germany is different from biking in France. The French have a huge network of rural roads, open to cars but in most cases little used. There are signs for various villages, but none of them are specific to bicycles. We navigated by using Michelin maps (mostly 1:250,000 regional maps) and picking white roads – little used secondary roads – and following green “scenic” routes wherever possible. That worked out pretty well.

In Germany, we initially didn’t carry maps at all, since there are lots of bike-specific signs, usually pointing to routes along bike paths. These were usually either a paved strip separated from a main roadway by a meter or two, or a dirt or gravel path through the woods. While it was nice to often be separated from traffic or in the woods, neither option was as flat and as smooth as a road paved for cars; the paved ones were usually thin pavement with large bumps in it from tree roots, and with significant curbs in towns. For Germans, these bumps aren’t that big of a deal, since most German bikes had fat tires, front shocks, and seat-post shocks. For lighter weight road-riding bikes like ours, it was more of a challenge; in addition to the rougher ride, we got a lot of pinch flats from hitting tree roots or curbs. Eventually we started carrying bike maps, usually the ADFC (German National Bike Touring Club) endorsed maps by BVA. While these show the different bike routes clearly, they still have the drawback that they don’t indicate the difference between paved and unpaved routes.

If we were going on a tour largely in Germany again, we would probably pick fatter tires for our rear wheels, to reduce the incidence of pinch-flats on the rougher German bike paths. We were running 700×28 tires.

]]>http://xenotropic.net/europe/?feed=rss2&p=2440Germanyhttp://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=242
http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=242#commentsFri, 07 Sep 2012 17:59:47 +0000http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=242From Strasbourg, we headed across the Rhine river, into Germany. This was the first time that we were biking across a national border – all the other times we crossed the border by train. Since it was entirely within the EU, though, it was pretty boring; there wasn’t even a “Welcome to Germany” sign. We were looking for the route along the Rhine, supposedly signed as EuroVelo 15, that goes all the way from Switzerland to the North Sea. Finding it from the bridge was a bit tricky, but by heading south along the river and looking around, we eventually managed to link up with it; the signs were less clear (often just a green bike on a white background) as opposed to Switzerland where they were Eurovelo logos.

Biking north from Karlsruhe.

Lufthansa 747 on the roof of the Karlsruhe Technology museum.

The most famous part of the Rhine is the so-called “Romantic Rhine” that stretches from Mainz to Koblenz, about 65km. Since we had more time, we rode from further south (Strasbourg) to further north (Bonn). In some ways, the southern section was actually more romantic than the “Romantic Rhine”, since it was less swarmed with tourists. Karlsruhe and Speyer were nice mid-sized cities that were friendly and unpretentious. In Karlsruhe, we enjoyed biking almost into the center of town on a forested bike path, and also staying in a very well designed hotel room, complete with tree trunks and forest wall paper. Speyer had a very interesting-looking technology museum; we didn’t get to go inside, but seeing the 747 on the roof was impressive enough.

We also found some of the most amazing bike paths of the trip. Heading north from Karlsruhe, we were on a strip of pavement going through dense forest for about twenty miles. Elsewhere along the route we were similarly on paths that went through beautiful leafy forests with very few people around – maybe one bicyclist or pedestrian every half hour. We rode our longest day, from Speyer to Mainz, on a series of great-looking path segments, mostly through forests and occasionally peeking out along the Rhine itself. When we were alongside the river, we were often impressed at how it was full of shipping – long barges carrying coal or shipping containers. Although shipping barges don’t sound scenic, they give the Rhine a grounding, a working river as well as a pretty river. The barges also go at about the same speed as a bike, so it’s possible to pretend you’re racing against them.

The Romantic Rhine, despite lots of tourists, managed to still be pretty romantic. The walls of the Rhine Valley become very steep. This geography was exploited in the Middle Ages by various robber barons who built fortresses to tax traffic going up and down the river. In St. Goar, we stopped to wander through the byzantine hallways, passageways, tunnels, and chambers of Burg Rheinfels, just to make sure we managed to take in a bit of history along the way.

Although there were large groups of tourists along the Romantic Rhine, we were happy to see that a lot of them were also on bicycles. The majority of the bicyclists were older than us, and most seemed to have a minimum of luggage – likely either on supported tours or on “credit-card touring”. This made us happy, since we enjoy bike touring a lot and it is great to see it is something we might be able to keep doing for a long time.
The north end of the Romantic Rhine is, unsurprisingly, in northern Germany. So are a lot of Suzanne’s relatives and family friends, which are clustered around Mölln, where Suzanne’s mom was raised. The Rhine itself keeps on trucking through the urban northeast (Bonn, Köln, Düsseldorf, and other medium-sized cities) and into the Netherlands, reaching the North Sea at Rotterdam. But we stopped at Bonn, catching a train to Hanover.

In Hanover, we stayed with Christensen family friends, whom Suzanne frequently visited for summers when she was a teenager. Starting at the age of 12, she would stay with them and babysit their two daughters. It’s been almost a couple of decades since then, so the daughters are full-grown, and one of them took us to the Lake Maschsee Festival (Maschseefest). She also showed us the Hanoverian tradition of the Lüttje Lage, which involves drinking schnaps and beer in a pair of shot glasses held so that they cascade – the schnaps pouring into the beer, and the mixture pouring into one’s mouth. It requires a bit of coordination to avoid pouring anything down your face or into your nose. However, we had expert instruction and multiple chances to practice, since it is usually ordered as a “meter” – 22 shot glasses in all, which when lined up are a meter long.

From Hanover, we headed to Lüneburg, a small, pleasant city where one of Suzanne’s cousins lives; and then another day of biking to Mölln, where we stayed with Suzanne’s uncle Gunther. Gunther took us out to an excellent fish dinner (Mölln is known for the many freshwater lakes surrounding it) and to see the town of Mölln where Suzanne had spent many childhood summers. We paid a visit to the statue of Till Eulenspiegel, a legendary clown or jester from the middle ages, and the mascot of sorts for Mölln.
With the whirlwind of family visits almost over, we realized that the trip was almost over as well. But we still had a few days left of biking, and we particularly tried to savor them, knowing that we would be in Denmark (where we were not planning to do any biking) in a few days, and back in California within a week. We stopped in Lubeck, famous as the historical capital of the Hanseatic League. Lubeck was the last German city we saw, since the last few hundred kilometers to the ferry to Denmark were more sparsely inhabited. We went up the coast of the Baltic Sea north of Lubeck, through little seaside resort towns: Gromitz, Kellenheusen, Dahme, and a few others. They were all seaside resorts on a cold sea – windswept and beautiful, but with a climate that you really have to be from Northern Germany to love. It was like being back in Bretagne again: wildly variable weather, sunny one moment, raining the next, and with stiff winds that shifted throughout the day. Fortunately we frequently had a tailwind pushing us northward, and that made our days go by quickly. Scandinavian influence stared to show up in the architecture of the houses. And despite our best efforts to savor every moment, we eventually reached Puttgarden for the ferry to Denmark.

]]>http://xenotropic.net/europe/?feed=rss2&p=2420Strasbourghttp://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=230
http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=230#commentsSun, 12 Aug 2012 12:44:33 +0000http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=230In 2002, a young Suzanne Christensen Morris, just graduated from UC Davis, headed to France looking for adventure. Keen to be close to her German roots, she chose to move to Strasbourg in Alsace, on the border with Germany. After a few weeks of hard searching for a job and a place to live, she found an amazing apartment in a building owned by a friendly family, and a job as a test-baker for Ancel (now “Dr. Oetker”), which is sort of like the Betty Crocker of continental Europe. She stayed for a year, and the process made a bunch of friends, and developed a deep affection, or perhaps addiction is the better word, for tarte flambée (flammenkuchen in German), a pizza-like concoction with a thinner crust usually garnished with cream, onions, thick-cut bacon, and sometimes cheese. So Strasbourg was a must-stop location for us on this trip.Biking on Strasbourg’s bike paths with Julie.

We stayed first with Julie, a former Ancel co-worker, and her boyfriend Hubert, who live just on the outside of Strasbourg. We biked around Strasbourg with them, and then went to Julie’s parents’ house for the evening, an event that Suzanne had been talking about for months. Julie’s father, Jean-Michel is a brewer for Kronenbourg, and more importantly he fabricated his own tarte flambée oven. The end product was as good as Suzanne remembered it (and as good as Joe thought it ought to be given how much Suzanne had been talking about it). The crust is thinner than the thinnest pizza crust, but with more of a buttery flavor and a light hint of nutmeg. It is cooked in a wood fired oven, designed such that the flames both heat the tarte from below and above; there is a slot at the back of the oven and a curved plate so that a sheet of flames shoots over the top of the tarte. Jean-Michel also had a CO2-pressurized, refrigerated (not the keg itself, but heat exchanger coils) tap of a traditional Alsatian lager, brewed at Kronenbourg for its employees but not for sale.

We also stopped in at Suzanne’s old apartment in Strasbourg. Suzanne had met the landlady, Jeni, when the bus they were riding broke down (in the rain) and Suzanne started telling her about her difficulties in finding a place to stay. Jeni liked Suzanne and offered her the apartment in the top floor of their building, which was furnished and quite nice. Ten years later, Jeni said that she hadn’t rented it to anyone after Suzanne because she didn’t think she would be able to find such a nice tenant. Jeni’s daughter, Noemi, had also had a child, whom Suzanne was happy to meet.

After visiting Julie and her parents, we headed out to the small town of Munster to the southwest, near the city of Colmar, to visit another Ancel co-worker, her husband, and their toddler whom Suzanne also hadn’t yet met. Munster is the town that gives its name to Munster cheese, and we had it several times while there. They took us to a mountaintop restaurant where the dessert was day-old Munster, and then the next morning we had a brunch consisting of salad, potatoes, and Munster; the latter was simple but very excellent because the cheese was so good.

From Munster, we went back to Strasbourg by train, and then biked into Germany, out first time on this trip (and Joe’s first ever time) biking across a national border. Since it’s inside the EU, it was pretty boring; there wasn’t even a “Welcome to Deutschland” sign. From the border, after a bit of searching around, we found the bike route running along the west bank of the Rhine.

]]>http://xenotropic.net/europe/?feed=rss2&p=2303Switzerlandhttp://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=219
http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=219#commentsWed, 01 Aug 2012 20:26:05 +0000http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=219Switzerland looks like a postcard of Switzerland. Green mountains plunging into crystal blue lakes. Grassy fields as far as the eye can see. Immaculate trains that are on time except when they catch on fire (more on that later). Bike trails that run like a swiss watch, ticking back and forth between countryside and town centers. Cool sunny weather.

On Lake Lucerne near Fluelen.

We left Italy by train, following directions given to us by a couple of Swiss bike tourists that we met in Italy: Siena to Milan (where we stayed overnight), Milan to Chiasso (the border), Chiasso to Bellinzona, Bellinzona to whereever. We had a day to spend around Switzerland before meeting Suzanne’s family friends in Lucerne. We did Google Images searches of the nearby train stops and chose the town of Fluelen since it seemed the most quaint and scenic. It also had a Swiss National Bike Route running through it.

At Chiasso we switched from Italian trains to Swiss trains. TrenItalia usually got us where we needed to go (except when the workers went on strike, but that was only for half a day), but the trains were always a little wild-west: there may or may not be a bike car, or a conductor, or air conditioning, and when there was air conditioning often someone would open a window anyway. The Swiss trains, by contrast, look like something out of a train magazine, as if each car had just been washed and/or painted. All the train workers spoke English, often excellent English. We had a six-minute transfer in Bellinzona, which was worrisome: would we have to dash across the station running down and up stairs to get to another platform (which we had done in both France and Italy). But no, the trains were both on the same platform: the Swiss were organized. We got off one train, waited in place for five minutes, and then got on the other train. On the more local trains, there are multiple monitors in each car indicating the next few stops.

However, the train to Fluelen had an uncharacteristic event: the conductor came walking hurriedly through our car, talking animatedly in Swiss German, and a minute later the train stopped and lots of smoke started wafting around the outside of our car. It turned out that one of the brakes on the car behind us had locked up. The Swiss put out the fire, disconnected the last three cars, and continued on, announcing that we we running 34 minutes behind. We were pretty happy about the whole thing, because the cars that were disconnected were all second class, so there was no longer space for all the second class passengers — so we moved up to first class, where there were full-height windows that allowed us to see more of the mountain valleys that we were going through.First class wife

Fluelen, where we stopped, did not disappoint. Its train stop was directly on Lake Lucerne, surrounded by mountains. There was a cafe next to the station on the lake, with many people who had backpacks and trekking poles, and were apparently doing hikes around the area.Suzanne is very happy to be in the Alps.

In addition to being super-beautiful, the other thing we immediately noticed about Switzerland was that it was super-expensive. Ten dollars for a bratwurst, seven dollars for a slice of cake, fifteen dollars for a cocktail. Without a place to stay here, we probably woudn’t have come at all due to the cost.

The first day of biking around Lake Lucerne was a radical departure from the Val dal Infierno in Italy. It was cool and sunny, and there was a marked national bike path (route 3) that went around the lake. We didn’t have a map, and we didn’t need one either: there were signs at every turn, and often when there wasn’t a turn. There was almost always a separate bike lane, and when the road went through the mountain, there was always a lane and often a separate bike tunel — in one case about three-quarters of a kilometer long.

We camped out on the lake, and went to the next day to the house of Suzanne’s family friends, Denise and Kjell Mattson. It was an excellent change of pace to stay with them, to be in an actual home instead of a campground or a hotel. We did laundry, surfed the internet, and generally lounged around.

With Denise and Kjell at their house.

Denise and Kjell took us to a mountaintop restaurant, where you order in sausages and cook them yourself, enjoying the swiss beer and the spectacular view at the same time.Enjoying Swiss barbeque.

After a very relaxing And rejuvenating stay with the Mattsons, we set out going north on Swiss national bike route 3 again. We spent 2 days on route 3, going from Lucerne to Basel. It twisted and turned through cute towns and fields and hills, with excellent singnage almost the entire way except for one construction site where a sign was taken down at an important intersection. Nevertheless, it was an inspiring demonstration of how easy biking across half a country can be with a national bike route.

From Basel we headed north by a train to Strasbourg, where is Suzanne spent the first year after college.

]]>http://xenotropic.net/europe/?feed=rss2&p=2194Tuscanyhttp://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=174
http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=174#commentsWed, 25 Jul 2012 11:15:58 +0000http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=174Italy, we love you. We can’t help it. Architecture, pasta, gelato… we can’t get enough. You’re not making it easy, though. How about thinning out the throngs of tourists and turning the heat down, oh, twenty degrees or so? That’s really all we ask. Oh, and it would be awesome if the bike compartments in your trains were actually unlocked and available for cyclists, and half the trains were not cancelled because of a strike. But no biggie.Sunflower field outside Firenze.

We were so excited for Italy that we cut short our last few days in France and beelined to Florence. By beelined, I mean we took the slow and meandering path of a bee, stopping at every station. (The slower regional trains are the only ones in which you don’t have to pack your bike up like a piece of luggage.) We arrived in Florence, had our first delicious Italian dinner, and took note of the fact that it was still 85° at 8pm. Whatever, we thought.

The next day we biked about 45km to San Giovanni Valdarno. I’ve heard people talk about the rolling hills of Tuscany. I wouldn’t describe these as “rolling”. I’d describe the region in terms of hillsides, implying some degree of verticality. Still, it was a very pleasant day, and we had a good time.

The next day, Italy cranked it UP. It was a scorcher. We didn’t mind, though – we had a short day planned. That was until we entered the valley of Hell. Literally – see for yourself:Sign for the Valley of Hell of Valdarno.

After great success with Michelin maps in France, we unwittingly bought a dud. The Italy Michelin map was seriously challenged. As a result, we got stuck in Terranuova Bracciolini, re-entering the town at least three times by accident. May we never return again.

This wouldn’t have been as big of a deal if I hadn’t had two cappuccinos
(four shots of espresso! I had no idea. They look so pretty.)

and hadn’t gotten stung by a bee while riding. I entered some sort of caffeine-enhanced pre-anaphylactic shock state, asking Joe in a daze if this was the same town we had started in (we had already biked 10km at this point).

The Michelin map also failed to indicate when a road turned into a steep, deeply rutted gravel path. Oops! (And, yes, we’re still in the Valley of Hell at this point.) Biking was not an option. Walking out of the Valley of Hell.

We made it out, and got to our hotel in Arezzo about four hours later than planned. Worst day of honeymoon OVER! Woo hoo!

Joe and I promptly went on strike and refused to do any more biking in Italy. Commence lounging in cafes and slurping gelato. Arezzo and Siena have both proven to be excellent locations for these lazy activities, along with seeing beautiful architecture and eating delicious food. Being on strike is great! This must be why the Italians do it so often.Living the cafe life with spritzes in Siena.

]]>http://xenotropic.net/europe/?feed=rss2&p=1742Provencehttp://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=171
http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=171#commentsFri, 13 Jul 2012 07:49:50 +0000http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=171From the Sarlat we took a train to Arles. Arles it was having a music festival, and more importantly, nearby Avignon was having its annual gigantic theatre festival. We stayed in a super nice hotel room in Arles — not on purpose, it just seems to be the last available hotel room in Arles, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. Arles was a nice change from Sarlat. There were some tourist looking at it ancient roman buildings, but the french outnumbered the tourists by a wide margin. The weather is very warm, and the likelihood of rain seems slim.Street performers at the Festival d’Avignon.

We went to Avignon by train for an afternoon and evening. The streets it worth jammed with people and performers of the various plays hawking their playbills; every available surface in the town was covered in posters advertising for the plays. Joe was able to locate the venue where he had been a part of a play in college over 15 years ago, and we went to see a rendition of Dangerous Liaisons. It was a good performance, but made us both realize that our French is not as good as we sometimes think it is.

Then we rode to Aix-en-Provence in a (longish) day. Like Arles, Aix was a very pleasant small city to visit and hang out in. We kept riding east and then south, heading for the coast. One road in particular that was very nice was the D17, starting in Salon-de-Provence, passing through Aix and past Mont St. Victoire, which was a subject of many of Cézanne’s paintings that Suzanne studied in college.

It also went past several regional wine tasting centers, which were unfortunately closed since we were biking through on Bastille Day. Provence got gradually more green as we headed more towards the sea, changing from dry chapparal to wooded hills.

We knew that we were running out of time in France and were eager to get to Tuscany, so we stopped at the town of Cuers and took a train to Antibes, on the Cote to Azur. We slept at a busy campground in Antibes and biked to Nice — mostly on an excellent separated bike path. This ride was a deja-vu for both of us: for Joe it was like a flashback to being at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg: flat, warm, beachy, everyone in swimsuits and white fluffy clouds in the sky. For Suzanne it was a more specific deja vu, since she had ridden here before with her friend Emily in 2000.

]]>http://xenotropic.net/europe/?feed=rss2&p=1710Bordeaux and Dordognehttp://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=163
http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=163#commentsTue, 10 Jul 2012 13:51:47 +0000http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=163We love the culture and people of Bretagne, but the rain day after day got to be a bit much. One very accurate postcard said (in French) “it is beautiful in Bretagne, several times a day.” Most of the time it was in fact quite nice and the weather warm and it what is beautiful weather. But two or three times a day there would be a rainstorm of varying degrees — sometimes just a late missed that wasnt quite rain, but other times outright rainstorms. We started to feel like we were always putting on or taking off rain gear, and always hanging up half of our clothes to dry at night. So we headed south, first to Bordeaux and then from there to Dordogne.

Picnic in Dordogne.

This only partly ameliorated the rain issue. We got in a couple of beautiful days of bike riding, but still got rained on — particularly on the first night in Dordongne, when we were rained on with a giant thunderstorm. Suzanne’s tent held up admirably.

Within Dordogne we went by many old caves with prehistoric paintings. However, we were not able to visit any of them, because they have very limited tickets per day to preserve the paintings; and there were hordes of tourists. But many of the more interesting sites we were able to see it from the road, including many castles that were built into the sides of the limestone cliffs.

We spent a layover day in Sarlat, a town famous for its well preserved medieval buildings. However, it was also cursed with you hordes of tourists. Despite them, it managed to maintain some of its quaintness, and there were lots of good and reasonably priced restaurants. We also experienced for the first time four-star camping, which we liked — it was scenic with more trees and larger campsites than other places.

Next week we are off for points its further east, to provence and the mediterranean coast.

]]>http://xenotropic.net/europe/?feed=rss2&p=1633St. Malo and the Breton Coasthttp://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=158
http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=158#commentsThu, 05 Jul 2012 07:51:10 +0000http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=158We are in St. Malo, and it is awesome. Suzanne finally got module marinere (mussels), we drank lots of cider, and we took a walk around the city walls, which I have an amazing view of the harbor and surrounding islands. There was also a tall ship show in town and sailors everywhere.

Today we go to see a mont saint michelle, and the day after we take a train to the Bordeaux. It has it been raining a lot here; we actually met two other bike tourists from Germany who were heading home because they thought it was going to be raining everywhere in France. We aren’t nearly so pessimistic, but we are excited to be in the south where it is warmer and dryer (usually).

]]>http://xenotropic.net/europe/?feed=rss2&p=1581We Love Francehttp://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=155
http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=155#commentsMon, 02 Jul 2012 14:37:04 +0000http://xenotropic.net/europe/?p=155France greeted us in full with abundance: a sunny day, a beautiful landscape, small cute villages and patisseries with pain au chocolate and other delicious baked things.

On our first morning in France we visited and breakfasted with Tifane and Olivier, friends through Suzanne’s job teaching at the Ecole Bilangue in Berkeley, and Olivier’s family. It was an excellent first stop as they were all from Bretagne and gave us pointers on where to go (in short: the coast) and helped us figure out what trains we might take for those parts where we don’t want to bike.

First of many pain au chocolat to be eaten in France.

There is no getting around the fact that France is just an easier place to bike tour than Ireland. There is camping facilities and bakeries everywhere, providing cheap and easy shelter and fuel for wandering cyclists. The food is amazing. And everyone drives on the right side of the road (we had to swerve across the road a couple of times when we accidentally reverted, Irish-style, to left).

We spent our first night in an amazing campground in Primel-Trégastel, part of the town of Plougasnou, with Carmel-by-the-sea grade views but at $10 a night and half the campground was empty.

We also biked through nearby Morlaix, a scenic town of 16,000 with two stunning bridges overhead and hundreds of sailboats in the channel running through town.

We’ll be continuing east along the coast over the next few days to Mont Ste Michelle and then getting on a train heading south — probably from St. Malone to Bordeaux.